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.

MAY 27 — When you begin to understand that endings and outcomes are out of your control, that only your effort is what you can determine, life, and decisions, get easier.

I have found that just letting my nose, and not Google, decide where to eat serves me pretty well when I’m in a strange place.

A café opened in a PJ mall and I rightly predicted it wouldn’t last long.

It served coffee and pastries but when I walked past it, I could smell neither.

A place I used to frequent for its bamboo noodles is now off my list because the store is now poorly-ventilated, the air stale, the ghosts of old smells lingering and what used to be a bustling eatery is now nearly empty at lunch time.

How awful it must be to be on holiday and have a cold.

Scent, as much as taste, determines the level of enjoyment when it comes to food and in Taiwan I followed scents but also sounds, the crackle of scallion pancakes on griddles, the busy clatter of rice bowls and spoons and where there is no sound, nor good scent, there can be no good food.

Yu Chocolatier was what I’d hoped it would be — a chocolate and dessert place good enough to make me call an Uber.

I am cursed (some say blessed) with a rich person’s palate in a peasant’s body because I can taste the difference between a cheap or fake chocolate and ones that would make me cry as I hand over my card.

Yu’s specialty is bonbons, the chocolatier’s founder being so enamoured with chocolate in his teens that he tried, as a teen, to learn the secrets of its making at home.

What bonbons would you like, they asked.

Surprise me, I said.

They did. I am glad I don’t live in the city; in a few weeks I would soon resemble a bonbon.

In Taipei you can find comfort food in rice and chicken or fine pastries. — Picture by Erna Mahyuni

With chocolate you need to get the ratios right, with bonbons you need the chocolate to be at just the right level of sweetness to counter the bitterness of cocoa.

You don’t want the chocolate to be overly thick, nor too insubstantial. It needs to last just long enough so you can savour the notes as you would a good wine, with a taste that would linger just enough to be memorable.

I also ordered the dessert of the day. It was a decadent, gorgeous creation with a fancy name I cannot remember but I do recall that it was pleasing and as lovely to taste, though not as lovely as the bonbons, as it looked.

I only visited one night market when I was in Taipei as I didn’t think my legs would be able to endure them for too long.

Yet I forgot how sore my legs were and I walked miles before I realised my endurance was spent, hunting down food like it was prey.

I walked through markets, through quiet streets, up stairs, past rows and rows of shoplots, never stopping until I found something worth stopping for.

By chance I happened on this stall that had won a Michelin star at Ningxia Night Market the 方家雞肉飯 (Fang Jia shredded chicken on rice).

It doesn’t look like much. A small quarter-cup of rice, with shredded chicken drenched in sauce on top, with little else.

Yet when I sat there, in the compianable presence of locals, it felt like the best thing on earth to have.

It’s so easy to eat, the warm, savoury combination of soft meat with rice just what you could appreciate after a long day though the uncle next to me ordered a couple of other dishes to have along with his bowl.

After finishing my bowl, the air felt less cold, my bones less grating and I could forget, for a while, the melancholy that dogged me in my final months of treatment.

Warm food in my belly on a cool night out, the simplest of pleasures.

The first place I would probably go to when or if I go back to Taipei is however NAKA Taipei, a lovely little coffee place with interesting combinations.

It is my only regret that I could not taste all the coffee on its menu because one needs to sleep after all.

The lychee long black at NAKA is an unlikely delight of a pairing; I was expecting something odd or cloying, but no, it’s like they made a long black with the spirit of a lychee drink, refreshing on even the warmest of days.

I also tried their tiramisu latte, which is also another surprising combination of dessert and coffee, each mouthful like drinking liquid tiramisu but in the best possible way.

They say food is best shared with company but sometimes, if the food is good enough, it is enough to keep your heart warm even when there is just one seat at the table.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 21 — A free society dances to the beat of civil disagreements. The presence of differences embodies, nay, advertises such a society.

However, a tedium-bent segment objects to free society’s vibrancy. It is disruptive, in their estimation. 

Better to silence people for their own good is their thinking. Acceptance and subservience maintain the path to peace. They also probably eschew rock and roll.

They prefer if Malaysia is less free. Far less free. It appears, unfortunately, hardly anyone stands up to them. 

In their own minds, it is the freedom which fosters discontent and threatens fixed values.  

It invites us to dissect the cacophony of voices inside the typical free society. And ask, are these detractors correct? After all, a free society is decidedly noisy.

This, this and this, you ignoramus

The anatomy of a civil argument is as follows.

Let the other fellow speak just as much as you, quiz the opinion. Once both are aware or made aware of each other’s argument, they have choices, a myriad of them. 

A free society thrives on civil disagreements, where differences are part of its vibrancy. — Bernama pic

To switch opinions, to clarify their position, to admit to the glaring weaknesses of their position, rebut, present fresher arguments. 

At the end, and it can feel a lifetime at times, they look each other in the eye, and if unable to recognise or concede, instead end up more opposed, then they can walk away from each other.

Adamant he is talking to a fool, while the other bloke stares at his rival’s retreating back and sniggers about the departing fool. 

But in the best of debates, few concede the whole argument. The ego overwhelms. Maybe later, sipping tea at home, both wander through the opponent’s rationales and admire them more than either wishes to admit. 

Neither is better for agreeing or disagreeing, no, both are in better stead because now better informed about the issue, regardless on which side. 

Better informed is a universe better than sticking to your guns in order to protect an idea.

This is for disagreements in person, in a legislative chamber, in a social media post comment section.

Agree, disagree, everyone ends up in bed. To toss and turn, and even deeply unhappy about your opponent’s ideas. But no one dies.

The other option, which dominated most of human history, involves body counts.

Might determines outcomes in the alternative. Opponents quickly turn into combatants. 

If in a restaurant, stab each other with dinner knives till one yields or in the case of gentlemen of a certain social standing of a different millennia ask to meet at dawn with pistols.

Or in the strong state, investigations and witch-hunts ensue.

There are no pretty choices in physical altercations to determine the correctness of positions. 

If this was extended to a whole nation or people, it’s war or riot. Imagine the Somme or Mahabharata's Kurukshetra, and the LA 1992 riots or our own May 13, 1969 for the latter.

They only bring regret.

I really hate you, are you staying for drinks?

A free society prides in its inhabitants possessing severe antithetical views, diametrically opposed on a range of issues, yet sturdy and resilient to not let those differences compromise the state’s integrity. 

To understand that the very nature of man is to hold differing opinions — from the very central like who must rule, to the personal like who can die or kill, or the silly but at times really personal like who gets relegated from a football league. 

Since disagreements are to follow man, even in the absence of a state, it is in man’s interest and his safety to find means to manage disagreements.

Either to stifle him to prevent disagreements which were always prohibitive, now made impossible by the AI age, or to set the rules of engagement.

Which leads to the background we choose for these inevitable disagreements.

Is a free society desirable?

Only Malaysians can answer whether we are in a free society, or that we rather not be free in our society. Or the existential whether this is our society to begin with.

There are those who claim freedom is subject to predetermined societal norms. 

I disagree. I do agree though they have a right to disagree with my disagreement. I earnestly believe, my free state exists beyond the confines of my mind.

If my side prevails, they get to argue with me and my ilk ad infinitum, till the end of existence.

If their preferred reality triumphs, those like me are made to shut up, full stop. Like Orwell’s “imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

I’ll shut myself up by winning

Like this conservative I know who yaps daily in my WhatsApp group, filling up 20 per cent of chat space and dominates with his inane links. 

He rails against the excesses of freedom, liberty and pluralism, without any self-reflection in the irony of these ideas which defend and protect his right to flood other people’s timelines.

And as much as it annoys me, and boy oh boy, those words annoy me to the tip of the Kilimanjaro, it exhilarates me that I live in a society where the most annoying, impudent, ignorant and tone-deaf get their chance, get their voice. 

And those who are of the same inclination, gather around the campfire even if to listen to each other vilify humanity.

The Internet has done far more to champion Article 10 of our Constitution, the right to associate, than the government since formation through its agencies like the Registrar of Societies, Election Commission and RTM.

Democratised Malaysian homes

Senior citizens recall the various ways their parents physically beat them, with wistful nostalgia. 

Young parents today gallop left and right to persuade the children to correct behaviour, also reverting to bribes if all fails.

When new Malaysians are raised to speak up, even for the wrong reasons, how are they to accept a state that wants to reduce public disagreements and ardently wants complete support of the state view? Modern parents are literally pushing their kids to ask why?

And they do.

A culture of asking why is the fertiliser for civil disagreements. Malaysian parents are populating a free society, which is the upbeat ending for this session which started with an ask, to dance. To actively disagree and see it as a societal strength. 

Malaysian leaders have to stop asking people to stop asking, and rather listen and explain. Be ready for the civil disagreement. Be ready to be a member of a free society.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 20 — “Would you like a cup of tea?”

It was not a question I expected, as I stood there at the entrance of SunnyHills Café in Taipei, bedraggled and a little damp after trying (and failing) to figure out the city’s buses.

Just 20 minutes prior to arriving at the cafe a harried bus driver had yelled at me for taking too long to get off the bus.

My post-cancer treatment legs were still too stiff; going down steps was and still is a painful affair and while the pain has ebbed a little, the stiffness keeps rushing back like waves to sand.

So I wasn’t angry at the bus driver, I couldn’t even understand what he was saying.

But from his frustrated tone, I get that he was upset.

If I was a much older woman, if I still had a bald head and cane, perhaps he might have been a little more patient or perhaps not.

As hard as it is sometimes to deal with a physical facade that does not match my reality (“You look good/You’re all better now, right?”), I will take the stiff legs, the awkward halting steps, the ever present pain as trophies hard-won, souvenirs from a battle where I claimed the ultimate prize — coming out alive. 

Yesterday I woke up and my left shoulder felt lighter than it had in over six months and I rolled my arm around and around, hearing the clicking of my shoulder blade as if it had finally come to life, like a thawing of ice after a long winter.

Back to my cup of tea.

I am used to the usual “CanIhelpyou?” I get at Malaysian stores that actually mean “Are you here to buy something, I hope you’re here to buy something, I’m here for you if you buy something.”

Instead the pleasant staffer asked if I wanted tea, and when I said yes, ushered me to a long, polished wooden table, with many seats as though prepared for not just one mussed and confused visitor but as many as could make it.

Sometimes all it takes is a cup of tea to warm the soul. — Pictures by Erna Mahyuni

On a little plate was a pineapple tart, the Taiwanese kind, a slender, rectangular cube, still in its wrapping and next to it, a cup of a pleasant oolong tea.

I should have asked what kind of tea it was but instead I sank into a chair to have my tea and tart.

There’s a very good reason SunnyHills pineapple tarts often win in local “what is the best pineapple tart” polls.

Part of it is the pastry. You can taste the butter, good butter at just the right ratio to keep the shell moist and the filling, ah, you wish local pineapple pastries could come close.

The filling is generous and the flavour gets the right mix of not being overly tart nor overly sweet but I confess I love the apple tarts most.

My friend says the reason SunnyHills’ tarts taste so good is that they use only pineapple instead of substituting in some wintermelon.

I think that’s only part of the charm. What the tarts get right is that lovely mouthfeel where you get just the right amount of dough and filling with each bite, without leaving a doughy aftertaste or an unpleasant overly sour flavour from poorly prepared pineapple jam.

There was no attempt to immediately ask me why I was there or to show me what they had in-store, the wares were on display after all.

When I looked curiously at the apple tarts, the salesperson asked if I would like a sample and I said, sure.

She handed me a whole tart.

Bear in mind, Taiwanese pineapple tarts are the length of my palm and thick as two fingers and being the typical Malaysian who is used to free samples being the size of a fingernail, this was an unexpected bounty.

So you see, dear reader, you can hardly blame me for buying two boxes of tarts, some banana waffle biscuits and a gift set of tarts for the friend who was the reason I was there in the first place.

She had asked me, “Are you going to SunnyHills? No pressure.”

I said, “Well, I could.” I could and I did, because my itinerary was as loose and as free as the passing clouds. 

After looking at my receipts, I realised I wasn’t even charged for the cup of tea, nor was there a fee for the tart that accompanied it and of course, the apple tart sample was free too.

Perhaps it was hospitality.

Perhaps they just knew that once you tasted their tarts, you wouldn’t be able to resist taking some home with you.

If there is one memory I will hold most dear about Taipei, it is that one cup of tea and the kind of simple hospitality you don’t get as much in big cities so when you do find it, when you’re standing on shaky legs in the rain, it’s something to savour, like you would a very good, buttery tart.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 14 — Have you seen the number of school books kids in national schools (from as young as Standard 1) are required to bring to school? 

Some of them look like they’re hauling luggage in the airport for a two-month trip in Rome. Is all this backpack-like activity helpful for the spines and backs of eight- and nine-year-olds? 

Most importantly, is there some reason why e-textbooks remain like something from the far future? Have we not entered the digital age like, uh, two decades ago?

Note that at present the only government initiative on digital textbooks is DELIMa (Digital Education Learning Initiative Malaysia, see note 1). This is the Ministry of Education’s main digital learning portal (rebranded from earlier MOE Digital Learning efforts post-Frog VLE). 

It provides access to hundreds of digital textbooks along with other resources like interactive modules, videos, and tools from partners such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple.

However, this platform is only a supplementary or optional resource for most primary and secondary schools. Long and short, students still need to lug their backpack-like bags to school almost every day.

More than a decade ago marketing author Seth Godin already proposed that schools produce PDF versions of textbooks, send these to kids and update them as and when necessary. 

Also, with the explosion of video lessons, interactive learning websites, educational games, etc you really wonder if buying (let alone hauling) huge textbooks is absolutely necessary at all.

Tech guru Kevin Kelly even talked about the screening phenomenon in which the future will consist of accessing information, images and messages from “wherever” (phone, office walls, traffic junctions, etc.), after which they can do mash-ups, share their work, etc. 

In light of the advent of such a tech-soaked society, are physical textbooks really the best we can do? 

Shouldn’t the education sector be preparing our kids where the ‘book’ is no longer delimited by physical binders, where information flows (from producer to producer) rather than remain static? 

Shouldn’t the education sector be preparing our kids where the ‘book’ is no longer delimited by physical binders, where information flows (from producer to producer) rather than remain static?  — Bernama pic

Isn’t the preference for physical textbooks (as opposed to e-textbooks) analogous to being stuck in an era of Encyclopædia Britannica (as opposed to Wikipedia)? 

And need we even remind ourselves about the advent of AI and how that may completely transform education very, very soon?

Finally, wastage is a serious issue. Year after year, new copies (as in thousands and thousands of them) of the same books are printed then chucked aside after the final exam. 

It would appear the only beneficiary of that are the book-sellers; the rest of society picks up the cost of this externality.

Quite a few private schools have already chucked aside physical textbooks. When will our public schools follow suit?

Check out DELIMa’s website at https://delima.moe-dl.edu.my/

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 14 — We are shaped by our past.

Anyone walking past a university’s history department would half expect to come across a poster like that. Nothing gaudy like dinosaurs or Roman slaves rowing a galleon as backdrop pictures but it is not hard to imagine. The poster, not T-Rex or abused collaterals.

However, hardly anyone has a carbon copy recollection of “what occurred before” exactly like another person in the same room, even in a very large room, say the population size of a metropolis. In its very nature, history is divisive.  What is less mentioned, it is deeply personal.

Ask 10 persons in a family about a commotion 10 years ago and various accounts are produced. That’s one family. 

Multiply that by the millions living and dead over an average of a 150 years across two parts of Malaysia which is equal to the size of Germany, then imagine the infinite number of accounts to reconcile when historians try to figure out our federation. Historically, speaking.

Easy answers are a mirage. Easy answers when compiled is historical absolutism because it is lazy. Yet easy answers are what Malaysian governments tend to rely on and dish out to us.

Being a history aficionado it thrills to know there’s a massive interest uptick, recently. 

However, the enthusiasm seems less “want to learn” and instead morphs into “See, we are right” vacillations. Suffice to say, humility is constantly absent.

They are history rebels rather than history buffs, because the historical absolutism nauseates. They go off the state approved grid by going to the Internet.

Time to enter the vault to open the imaginary time capsule.

The controlling present

How fiction is treated provides an insight to how facts are filtered constantly.

Spectacularly, our fiction is obsessively contained. Made-up stuff inside novels require approval, to protect the people from threats. If even fantasy is policed, consider the paranoia about details of the past.

This leads to what are state sanctioned history facts.

Malaysians are constantly asked to respect the official account, which the government releases, and alters occasionally. Remember the time we were informed the country was never colonised to fit an ongoing separate political narrative?

Official account is truth — those in power insist — because it is official and from the officially appointed departments. Our officials can go all day and night repeating the mantra about how official “data” is true “data”.

So, to belatedly expect academia to have a spine is disingenuous. The only historians allowed to have a successful academic career are those willing to dispense with their spines.

The cynical view, those who contradict the “official” version reach their glass ceiling far quicker.

Inside the confines of academic forums, symposiums and exchanges, a degree of latitude exists, but when it is presented in our syllabus it better be close if not a printout of the official version.

How history is taught in schools affects the tone Malaysians hold. — Picture by Yusof Mat Isa

The masses roam the Internet

This context is necessary when examining the chaotic study of the past among Malaysians.

Indoctrinated in their school years, restrained in their university years, conditioned by a dominant state media, now that they can ask their best bud Anthropic or ChatGPT, they behave like children let loose in a toy store.

Can they be blamed?

In the information age, our government is adamant to tell the people rather than to discuss with the people.

History is sanitised to a painful conclusion. Those in power have always been right. Those who are not in power receive less adulation. This is a country without any regrets, just ups and more ups, according to our leaders.

Resulting in two types of Malaysians. Those who swallow whole the state’s interpretation. And the others, the growing segment, are disillusioned and search for their own absolute version. 

And no, while the dissenting group grows by the news cycle, it is also at odds with itself. Disagreements are rife. All absolutely fixed on their version and aghast at alternative takes.

Remember this…

How history is taught in schools affects the tone Malaysians hold.

Ironically, my best history teacher back in school was the most openly racist. Mr Thiru was the most colourful for the life lessons he imparted. 

Mrs Foo for witnessing Ah Pit punch the living daylights out of Shamsula — which was history in its own way.  

On that same token Mr Baharuddin for smashing Shamsula’s face the year before. 

Learning history was easiest with Mrs Maimun. Knowing institutionalised racism is also easy through Mrs Maimun.

The temptation is to ask students to memorise. To her credit, Mrs Maimun made us live history in our classroom, even if it was primarily from her point of view.

History is about talking about it. I recoil reading comments that being reminded of the past only opens unnecessary wounds. Where is the fine print that learning should not hurt?

I cringe when people claim the past is so definitive that the only sane thing to do is to accept it verbatim. If the Americans never got their act together in the second half of World War II, this is our 80th anniversary as Indonesia Raya. 

Malaya and Kalimantan as vassal states attend the annual festivities in Jakarta. The population from Aceh to Irian Jaya, adept with Indonesian and Japanese. 

Anyways, back to the classroom.

History teachers in developing countries act primarily as propagandists, it is inevitable. But if they did not, in my utopia, they’d facilitate our young to know the material through discussions.

In fact, examinations should rely equally on regurgitation of facts and the interpretation of those very facts by the students. The test is part memory but also a test of reasoning.

Success is rated by the extent the average student wants to acquaint with history after graduation.

Greying lines

Multimedia can blur lines. The current global hit film Michael is pilloried by critics and embraced by fans. 

The slur is that it is a whitewashing exercise of pop star Michael Jackson by omitting the avalanche of sexual allegations against him. The fans are enamoured with the entertainment and dance moves.

As a movie it works, ticket purchasers are not complaining. As a biopic it crashes.

So much of the analogy applies to Malaysia.

The state supported historical absolutism is held up by many Malaysians. It still fills seats. It gives the thrills necessary for fans even if it avoids the inconvenient bits. But that is not sustainable.

Not when the Internet lurks in the shadows.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 13 — Google Taipei travel recommendations and it’s invariably many variations of “hot springs”/”night markets”/”bookstores”/”food tours.”

Within my first day in the city, I learned something no travel guide told me about: Taiwan is weeb paradise.

There were gachapon machines everywhere, Hello Kity, Pokémon as well as various other cute mascots from all the Japanese popular IPs everywhere from pharmacies to cafés.

I confess my wallet trembled even if my inner five-year-old was ecstatic.

A little shamefacedly I admit that when I wasn’t eating Taiwanese food, I was eating Japanese cuisine instead, but it was very good Japanese food, all right?

Japanese food, brands, clothes, pharmacies...I wondered if I’d bought myself the wrong plane ticket.

I will talk about the food some other day but I was rather mystified at the many things I recognised as Japanese, considering Taiwan was under Japanese rule for 50 years.

Contrast that with the very fraught relationship between South Korea and Japan.

Back to my shopping temptations.

I am a fan of the Sentimental Circus line from the brand San-X.

San-X is the brand behind the fluffy mascot Rilakkuma and the equally cute and fluffy Sumikkogurashi.

Sentimental Circus is a different character line and perhaps the one with the saddest backstory.

”Stuffed animals abandoned in room recesses and on street corners that sneak away at night to form a secret circus. Tonight, their strange friends will gather together before showtime.”

When I was a little girl and often, as eldest daughters are stuck doing, I would have to entertain (keep out of trouble) my younger siblings.

Sometimes it would be some roughhousing, but often It would just be me staging little pantomimes with our stuffed animals, making various voices and inventing what passes for drama for under 10-year-olds.

Sanrio, San-x, Pokémon, Nintendo: There were so many Japanese IP goods it was almost like being in Japan. — Pictures by Erna Mahyuni

How could I not be charmed by the premise of stuffed toys deserted by their owners finding some meaning to life by creating their own little “sentimental circus?”

That’s the thing about sadness and pain; it’s easy enough to sit in it, cling to it as though it wasn’t bleeding you of the will to breathe. 

A friend of mine once said that making sense of the world, and its sadness, is something writers do very well — and that is why so many of them are so very sad.

So it felt like a blessing, or maybe a little nod from the Gods of Emptying My Pockets Via My Whims that Instagram told me there would be a Sentimental Circus pop-up store happening right around when I would be in Taipei.

Getting there was a bit of an adventure; I do not read Chinese characters (I really need to get on that) and I was trying to get to the Q Square Mall.

As always, the map apps decided I needed a lot of exercises so I found myself going back and forth, up stairs, up escalators, through tunnels and various doors until finally I saw a sign that said Q Square was in that direction.

The little pop-up was very charming. One part of it was dedicated to more Sentimental Circus merch than I had ever seen in my life, and another part to another San-X character.

While I did like looking, nothing caught my eye until I saw a plush from an older line, that had the label “Eat Me” stuck prominently on its side. 

Ah, an Alice in Wonderland reference.

Again it felt like a nod to my childhood when I’d read nearly everything by Lewis Carroll though it is such a pity to find out now he was a paedophile. 

Such is life.

Plush in hand, I decided to venture to another mall that was also accessible via train to go to another holy grail — Taipei’s Pokémon Centre. 

It is the largest Pokémon Centre outside of Japan and I hoped at the very least it would be less dull than Singapore’s.

When I arrived it was crowded, adults and children excitedly looking at Pokémon goods with long queues.

Again, I picked up another plush, of a Pikachu with pineapple goggles, a nod to Taiwan’s famous pineapple tarts. Then I bought some of the said tarts as souvenirs along with Pokémon-themed seaweed snacks, a shopping bag and then I was free to wander around the city and get dinner.

All through the day, my first day in Taipei, it rained nearly non-stop but not harsh or heavy rain just a constant patter of raindrops, sometimes light, sometimes more persistent with the clouds blocking my view of the sky.

It should have felt depressing but I was too busy navigating the malls and trains to be put off by the weather.

Compared to the Klang Valley’s torrents and flash floods, Taipei’s March rain didn’t feel so bad. If I get to return anytime soon, I’ll be sure to pack a much nicer coat... and a larger suitcase.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 10 — This one is dedicated to all the JPJ, UTC and post office counter officers who I’m sure have seen this happen a million times. 

You go to renew your driver’s license or what-not face to face (at the post office or JPJ). 

Since the government is encouraging everyone to go digital, you’re asked only for your IC and told that your renewed licence will be updated and the updated details will be reflected in your MyJPJ.

You go, “Okay, terima kasih.” You pay for your licence renewal, you wait four minutes, voilà (!), your licence is renewed. Hooray. You wish to get some visual confirmation, so what do you do? Here is where it gets interesting.

You are told that in order to see the latest details you need to open your MyJPJ app. Great, you open your MyJPJ app, happily expecting to see your driver’s licence expiry date moved a few years into the future. Only to be told that you can only log into MyJPJ via MyDigital ID.

FYI, as of May 2026, MyDigital ID will be mandatory for logging into major government apps. One, uh, login to rule them all sort of thing.

And here is where we expect to see numerous folks standing and typing awkwardly and in half-panicky mode at post offices and JPJ branches and UTC offices nationwide.

As of May 2026, MyDigital ID will be mandatory for logging into major government apps. — Picture via Facebook/MyDigital ID

Because some people (perhaps thousands) still have not downloaded and installed MyDigital ID.

Because some people (perhaps thousands) who installed MyDigital ID can’t remember their password to that app to save their lives. Can hardly blame them with the dozens of passwords we have to hold in our heads like juggling balls.

Because some people (perhaps thousands) are using old phones which have trouble opening so many apps already and thus tend to freeze when MyJPJ automatically opens both MyDigital ID and the web browser. God bless these people if they have cache issues.

Because many people (surely more than thousands), despite having none of the above issues, still have trouble logging in to MyDigital ID due to high demand and system overload.

Ergo? Lots of people taking up space in many government agencies, standing around and getting stared at because they’re taking an eternity to check their licence or road tax or vehicle ownership details and so on.

From the look on the face of the guy serving me at the Taman Paramount post office last week, I can tell he was thinking, “Sigh, yet another dude who can’t remember his MyDigital ID password and will hog the space and stand there awkwardly until he either miraculously finds it or gives up entirely and storms out.”

Moral of the story? Make sure you know your MyDigital ID login details like the back of your hand.

I can just imagine in the future if a policeman stops you and asks for your driver’s licence and, because you dah lupa your MyDigital ID password (or just cannot log in), you and him wait for 30 minutes while the “hour-glass” showing on your phone spins on and on and on (face palm).

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 7 — Umno turns 80 next week and the grand old party needs a redo. Call it a rebrand? Abandon race-first and embrace nation-first, or slip into decay and extinction. Sorry to rain down on the ongoing “Rumah Bangsa” parade, which is at least in its defence consistent with the party’s theme, to lack originality and substance.

There are various elements which require examination in order to provide a basis for the rejection of Umno in its present form, rendering the dilapidation inevitable.

Spoiler alert. It can walk out of this conundrum victorious, as the United Malaysian National Organisation. Change and still be Umno. With a massive upgrade.

It’s been OK all these years

Sorry, that mischaracterises the uneasy border Umno reinforces inside the country between its people.

Malaysians who are not Malays have never been OK with Malay-first, and increasingly neither are educated and worldly Malays comfortable with race exclusivity in politics.

A whole generation of younger and smart-phone connected Malaysians cannot explain a system which wants to divide its people as a nation building platform. It sounds an anathema to those above 50 but those below 30 in the majority feel so.

Umno can lead on this rather than spend time to persuade more Malaysians to adopt race exclusivity as necessary.

Umno leaders attend the Umno 80th Anniversary Convention at the World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur on May 2, 2026. — Bernama pic

The adjustment can be seamless

Higher Education Minister Zambry Abd Kadir said on May 1:

“Bumiputera education must be approached in a comprehensive manner, spanning early childhood education, formal schooling, skills training, higher education, and a culture of lifelong learning.”

If he removed the word Bumiputera, all Malaysian parents would nod in approval.

Learning in the modern world with its modern tools and vastly shifted social dynamics is a monumental challenge. Why make the distinction?

Umno wants TVET, all Malaysians could do with more TVET.

Why separate Malaysians?

Your problems are my problems too, why not face them together?

Moral fortitude to walk into difficult conversations

Umno-run governments have never been able to dislodge unity obstacles like vernacular schools and economic monopolisation. They were unable because they are accused of the same hypocrisy held by their opponents.

A single public school system is the future, to get best-bang-for-buck in an AI-age education. However, Umno leaders cannot win the argument since they are not committed to a single system themselves.

An all-inclusive Umno has the moral standing to hold discourses and ask others to invest in the country rather than their race.

We are mixed up

Every year, the statistics are debated.

About how the official Bumiputera and then the Malay count climbs. It does.

However, by the year, mixed marriages are the norm.

When I was born, there were only Tamils in my extended family. Today, it is a potpourri of identities. There’s a bit of Raya with the Deepavali, if you know what that means.

And that’s across the country, mixes of all hues. An increasing number of constitutional Malays are not at ease with conscious efforts to separate them from their own kin, in policy and development.

There is more openness to talk about roots.

The country lives more in flats than villages, community dynamics shift constantly, parties like Umno cannot reverse the trend, only navigate it on its own terms.

Exclusive parties inside disjointed BN

The speed at which Barisan Nasional collapsed in 2018 proved that nothing but power kept them together. Within two months, Sarawak BN left to become Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS).

In 1972, Razak Hussein wanted to end partisan politics by having a single government of all interests, by expanding the Alliance into BN. Not unlike the Chinese Communist Party.

There were 14 parties in it when GE14 removed them from power. It splintered.

They reassembled in 2020 after the Sheraton Move, but when they split easily when they contested in GE15, it was evidence that the identity-first politics of BN made friendships only about interests, not ideology.

What type of coalition can Umno manufacture now, other than to co-opt all former allies into the party as equal members?

Only in a third of the country

Umno exists effectively in one-third of the federation. Two-thirds is East Malaysia and they do not want anything to do with Malayan politics, and Umno is only about Malayan politics.

The 30 year-experiment to transplant Malayness into Usno as Umno Sabah, began evaporating when Shafie Apdal climbed too high in the national party ascendancy and was promptly kicked out in 2015.

In the euphoria of his new vehicle Warisan’s Sabah victory in 2018 he overextended to Semenanjung only to get burnt.

As there was a glass ceiling for Sabahans inside Umno Malay-first structure, there was a worse ceiling for Borneo wanting to spread inclusive state-first structure to the West.

Umno is the vanguard against pluralism and equality which threaten racial supremacy.

Umno Sabah is only an outpost in name, in the last six years morphed into a Sabah-first entity, as has Bersatu Sabah and any race based party. Sarawak, has completely gone state-based.

Untenable sea and ideology separation

Umno cannot spend its way into the East anymore. The recent financial autonomy for Sabah and Sarawak means they can use both the physical distance and cash to stave off Malay-first ideology Umno intends to enforce in the Semenanjung and export to Borneo.

It is the West’s 165 to the East’s 57 parliamentary seats, but the divisive structure in Semenanjung led by the Umno DNA in itself, Bersatu and PKR causes perpetual and dangerous incohesion.

The country needs a national rather than an ethnocentric spine to sustain an ideological consistency in both East and West.

Ask the members

Unfair to expect a democratic party to change without a democratic mandate.

Why not just hold a referendum? Ask the members, do they fancy opening membership to all Malaysians?

If Umno members in the 1990s accept Sabahans, from locations they’ve never been to, why would they struggle to include their own neighbours into their party?

Was it odd for ex-Umno members to sit with the others when they formed PKR?

Obviously, there were repeated episodes of resentment but the party got over it, the members got over it.

Umno leaders might want to have more faith in their own members.

Some like race exclusivity

Yes, they do. They are also called bigots. They generate negativity in that their core explanation for all deformities is the presence of those who do not look like them.

They are also the type who pour bile senselessly on the Internet.

Umno will shed a percentage when it goes inclusive.

It also wins a percentage. It can only up its overall quality even if the quantity with the ins and outs ends up the same. A home for MCA and MIC members clamouring for a political base.

Let go the past

To have beginnings, there must be endings.

The Umno ride in its present form has run its race, literally.

There are enemies, there’ll always be. However, when defensiveness is the only value proposition, one is blinded. To not see those who stand beside us, who have by a function of time become our reality. Our comrades in this journey as a country.

  The contestation of ideas ends with one idea sidelining the other, which is rectified at an election. The ideas are contested again and again, ad-infinitum, improving the country along the way.

The contestation of identity only scuppers relations. One no election can fix. Umno must mature into being a party of ideas and not merely a party of identity, for its own sake. To be a Malaysian party.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 6 — The best time to fly to Taipei, or even Tokyo for that matter, from Kuala Lumpur is 6 or 7am in the morning.

You arrive early enough in the afternoon with plenty of time left to explore.

It is also my least favourite time to fly.

As it's impossible for me to sleep the night before an early morning flight, I usually just head to the airport at midnight and kill time at a cafe.

Airport food is terrible and expensive but missing my flight is worse.

I'd daydreamed while I was stuck in bed during my cancer treatment about visiting Japan but my budget would only stretch as far as konbini meals and shared dormitories for the moment so rather than suffer, Taipei seemed to be the more affordable option.

An uneventful journey

My fairly affordable travel package included return flights on Batik Air. I upgraded my seats to ones with more legroom because I still struggled to get in and out of chairs (less so now) and the added expense was worth the comfort for my stiff legs.

I find Batik Air for the most part fine for a no-frills airline, nothing really stood out for me about them, which is, with my lack of tolerance for terrible service, a point in their favour. 

Taipei's Taoyuan Airport, travel guides will warn you, is quite a distance from Taipei proper.

Malaysia and Taiwan have a reciprocal agreement to allow each other's passports to go quickly through the e-gate, no uncomfortable lines and (possibly) surly immigration officers to meet.

It's not automatic — there are signs that direct you to a little kiosk where you register your passport for e-gate usage and once you're done, just head to the nearest passport e-gate and boom, you're in Taipei.

Weeks before, I had bought from Shopee an EasyCard, Taiwan's far more useful version of our Touch N Go travel card, but decided to wait until I was in the city to top it up and use it.

At the airport there's a kiosk where you can just buy your airport train token, the quickest and second-cheapest way to get to Taipei from the airport, the cheapest being the buses.

You get your little purple coin, tap it at the entry point then find yourself a seat. 

The trains are wider than our KLIA Express trains and brighter too but locals, I found, were quiet. If you heard someone talking loudly, you knew it was a foreigner.

Right across from me was a group of Americans whose plans for the next hour were foisted on my ears against my will.

Anyway, kids, this is why noise-canceling headphones exist.

The train would stop at Taipei Main Station, the hub for trains and buses as well as a central connecting spot for various malls. 

My hotel Hua Shan Din was just a few stops away from the station but I needed to change to the Bannan line, also known as the Blue Line. After I figured out where it was I then made my way to my hotel that I chose primarily because the reviews stated their rooms had very good bidets.

I am Malaysian; I like having the option to clean my bum with water and not just toilet paper.

Hua Shan Din also happened to be right next to Huashan 1914 Creative Park, that was formerly a winery and sake distillery but is now a creative arts centre and events hub, becoming the blueprint for other creative parks that came after it such as Songshan Cultural and Creative Park.

My hotel was charming; it had art on the wall as well as a guided tour you could sign up for where you would have someone explain the art on display and there was also art that you could purchase.

Alas, neither my wallet nor my one medium backpack would allow me an art purchase but it was nice to have an art gallary right within the premises.

The hotel itself used to be an old bank warehouse and right outside was a statue of their bank vault mascot "Baobby", its name a very cute play on the Chinese term of endearment 宝贝 (baobei, meaning treasure or precious one).

Hua Shan Din also has its own boardgame, which sadly I also had no room in my luggage to purchase my own copy. 

As for the rooms themselves, mine wasn't particularly large but I didn't feel too hemmed in. I liked that the shower and toilet were in separate enclosures, which I think people traveling with companions would appreciate.

What is with all those transparent bathrooms in hotel rooms these days, honestly?

Yes, the bidet was fairly modern though not as fancy as the American Standard bidet I encountered at a Bangkok hotel. 

The best thing about my hotel was how central it was, with a train station and bus stops just five minutes walk away and, I would discover later, that there was plenty to eat in the vicinity as well as a coffee bar that still haunts my daydreams.

We'll get to all that next week, dear reader, but in more current updates, I can finally lift my left arm over my head again and I can write my next column in a far cheerier mood than of late.

APRIL 30 — Life is imperfect. Democracy is an earnest attempt to enable the rule of the people. 

It’s rife with imperfections, like my relationship with Sugu, my Seremban cousin through marriage who knocked out a tooth off me, after I did the same months earlier. 

We would have been between eight and nine years old. 

Sugu died some time back but Negeri Sembilan democracy may resuscitate if actors act in good faith. 

Actors dictate democracy’s efficacy. 

Why? In a universal direct participatory democracy, all decisions require all to vote on and removes the principal-agent problem inherent in representation. 

For instance, if all Negeri Sembilan adults are asked to vote today on whether Aminuddin Harun should continue as menteri besar, a conclusive outcome prevails. Except this is not possible. 

A general view outside the Negeri Sembilan State Legislative Assembly before the opening of the First Sitting of the Fourth Term of the 15th State Legislative Assembly in Seremban on April 23, 2026. — Picture by Yusof Isa

Therefore, the conduct of those in power decide whether things are smoother or a complete wreck. 

State voters elect their state representatives who then pick a menteri besar. This happens ideally every five years, as it did in August 2023. 

The majority of state representatives known as assemblymen picked Aminuddin in 2018. They were all Pakatan Harapan members. 

In 2023, Pakatan contested in tandem with its new ally Barisan Nasional. Both Pakatan and BN dwindled to 17 and 14 respectively, shedding five seats to Perikatan Nasional. 

Those 31 Aduns from Pakatan-BN chose Aminuddin to continue. A super-majority in the house, Pakatan-BN was a solid coalition. 

There was a squabble involving the feudal lords and the state palace last week. The column won’t weigh into it, the subject is firmly about Aminuddin’s future. 

It was, however, a pretext for why the 14 BN electors withdrew support for Aminuddin’s administration which brought this kerfuffle.  

It’s a curious development. Months pass without any mention of Negeri Sembilan. On a ranking, the state south of Selangor is quietest in the country. 

Only three men have been mentri besar in the last 44 years. Even the longest serving, Isa Samad (1982-2004) serves a prison sentence for his shenanigans as Felda chairman, not as Negeri Sembilan’s menteri besar. 

There’s hardly any stories of rifts and betrayals from Seremban. Yet, this happens. 

The actors

The DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke is omnipresent, not only because he is an assemblyman but that his party is 11 of the 17 Pakatan assemblymen. This is shared a lot, including the discourse DAP-Umno relations are at a lowpoint. 

What is not shared as much is that of the 14 BN assemblymen, and all of them are Umno representatives, the most senior of them is former MB for 14 years, Rantau assemblyman and party deputy president Mohamad Hasan. Which is why all the pictures of BN assemblymen display only 13 individuals. 

Also, as foreign minister at a time of international jeopardy and intrigue, Mohamad or affectionately known as Tok Mat, has plenty of occasions to speak to the Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, also Aminuddin’s party and coalition leader. 

With all these criss-crosses or matrix reporting lines, how did we end up in this swamp?

Who is truly disgruntled? 

Cascades into a political race

2025 ended with drama and a change of MB in Perlis.That has not fully settled. 

Perak was the test case of Umno-DAP relations in 2022, which is the bedrock of the Madani government. If Negeri Sembilan continues to unravel, attention turns to Perak, and then to Johor which needs an election next March.

A round of switcheroos occurred in 2020 after the Pakatan federal government imploded. Another is on the cards if those in Cabinet are unable to cease the bleeding in Seremban. 

There are obvious questions about relationships inside Umno and Pakatan from the current political stalemate. 

Already DAP is ready for elections at the federal and state levels this year, and in a way, the situation brings it to a head, the long term viability of persisting with a fixed alliance between Pakatan and BN.

The other rumour

The word around the campfire is that Negeri Sembilan is a ruse to test the waters. Whether voters are keen or not on Pakatan and BN going in different directions in the lead up to GE16. 

Expectations are that the matter resolves itself in a fortnight. 

A way to see how organised PN is to take advantage of the indecision among Umno ranks. 

And finally, to remind Aminuddin who is closely linked to out of favour former PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli, who are those that have the patronage to sustain his stay as MB. 

The early signs indicate that a contained disjointment is manageable.

It is excellent for both BN and Pakatan to score the situation.

They’d both be happier to face each other in the general if indeed it’s a two way battle for supremacy.

Glad to trade blows in a general election and still be cousins with an outside chance of forming government again together if they cannot muster the majority on their own. 

It is not a great advert for the progress of democracy in Malaysia, but a sign of several schemes in play, just not in plain sight. 

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 29 — “You feeling all better now?”

I know the people who love me mean well when they ask if I’m well, if I’ve gotten better, if I’m cured.

You don’t ask the survivors of a war if their lives are back to normal now do you? 

On Friday my legs had started swelling again after an hour at the mall, so I eagerly got to the nearest open seat on the train going home.

Right across from me, a much older gentleman was looking at me with disdain.

All he saw was someone who looked perfectly fine.

Nothing about me now, from a cursory glance, would reveal that just a year prior I was spending most of my free time at the hospital.

Stairs, my forever nemesis

Some days I can go down steps normally but early in the morning or late in the evening my legs are either stiff or swollen or both.

The elevator is my best friend most of the time but sometimes when it’s broken or just too far away, the only option is to take that torturous journey while also dealing with my decades-old fear of falling down steps.

When I feel the back of my ankle brush against the back of a stair, it should be a comfort, a way to know I am firmly on the step instead of too close to the edge.

Instead something in me recoils.

It’s not something I can explain, this revulsion when I feel the back of my ankle or foot touch the back of a stair, worst being the grooves of an escalator.

One of those things that can’t be helped as I wear a size 8 so most stairs just barely accommodate my feet.

In Taipei they again became my cross though not quite as torturous as Bangkok’s nightmare long flights where I thought my heavy backpack would topple me over down, down, down like Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her.

So it was fitting that with the Year of the Horse (my birth year) I would finally visit that land not far from Japan, in a complicated relationship with China.

Why Taiwan?

Taiwan’s capital had long been on my bucket list but when I had money, I had no time; when I had time, my money needed to go elsewhere. 

Taiwan had always been on my bucket list and it’s nice when dreams come true. — Picture by Erna Mahyuni

Thanks to internet promos I paid slightly less than RM1,800 for flights and board for a 4D3N trip.

If I wasn’t currently made of tofu, perhaps I could have stayed longer by staying at a hostel but if I was to survive the trip, I would need a decent bed or I would not be able to leave it at all the next morning.

Taiwan isn’t Japan, where I would need to be checking my currency converter lest I accidentally spend a week’s groceries at a restaurant.

Cheap eats could be had, train and bus fares are very affordable as is, suprisingly, Uber.

Outside of souvenirs I would roughly be paying prices similar to the Klang Valley and that would not be much of a hardship.

Being affordable wasn’t why I wanted to go to Taiwan.

I’ve been to China and Hong Kong but what drew me to Taiwan was how much it reminded me of my own hometown.

In Sabah I grew up around Hakka speakers and it pained me that I while I could find Cantonese, Mandarin and even Hokkien books for my mini language library, I had yet to add Hakka.

That was my main mission — to acquire Hakka books, preferably about the language but I would settle for Hakka literature classics.

While I failed spectacularly at that mission due to bad luck and shyness, I found other things in Taipei.

When everything about you is broken

I understand now why people call travel “healing.”

It seemed fitting to finally make it to Taiwan in the Year of the Horse. — Picture by Erna Mahyuni

Once, I would scoff at seeing people on TikTok waxing lyrical about “healing” at various locales, whether it was waterfalls, islands or those music festivals where youngsters basically wear outfits consisting of a handkerchief and one shoelace, adorned with sequins.

When I went to Bangkok last year I was in the throes of depression even if I could not admit to myself.

I know what depression looks like, after all.

I have read books about it, attempted to write a book about it, talked to a doctor about it and called it “healthcare.”

What I told people was that I just needed to be anywhere but here.

When you’re chronically ill your body feels like a prison.

How do you escape it when you carry it with you everywhere you go?

The only answer is to take it, bars, chains and all to where you can forget how the walls seem to close in on you.

While Bangkok was a frenetic change of pace, Taipei was a place both entirely strange to me while promising to be spiritually familiar.

I miss it already.

The next few weeks I’ll write about the too-short time I spent there and then what possessed me to then pencil in a trip to say “Hi” to Mom.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 29 — 2026 seems to be the year of running sensations. 

First, Australian teenager Gout Gout smashes 100m and 200m records, inviting comparisons with Usain Bolt. Then last month Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo broke the world half-marathon record. 

And last Sunday? Kenya’s Sebastian Sawe showed the world it’s humanly possible to run a marathon (42km) in under two hours.

The London Marathon was Sawe’s fourth full marathon, and he won all four. But this last one was special.

Sawe ran a literally world-beating 1:59:30 at the London Marathon last week, being the first man to complete a sub two-hour marathon under race conditions (see note 1). 

The breath-taking fun fact is that Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha also broke the two-hour barrier with a time of 1:59:41 in his debut (!) marathon.

In case anyone’s wondering what the “fuss” is all about, what Sawe and Kejelcha did — when drilled down to its details — appear nothing short of super-human. 

Kenya’s Sebastian Sawe showed the world it’s humanly possible to run a marathon (42km) in under two hours. — Reuters pic

I mean, have you ever tried running 400 metres in less than two minutes? That’s about one lap around a stadium track. 

About once a week I run at my apartment’s track which measures about 400 metres. I usually manage to finish the loop in about 1 minute 40 seconds by which time my lungs have nearly collapsed and I’m about two steps from the ICU. 

I kid you not even doing ONE lap of 400 metres running as fast as my body can push itself leaves me half-dead. Now, consider the fact that Sawe ran 2.49 minutes per kilometre (which translates to just under a minute per 400 metres) — and he did this 42 times!!

Or, he ran 100 metres at a 17-second pace and he did it 422 times. It’s absolutely insane.

A Son of Nandi

Then again, when you look at Sawe’s brutal Kenyan training regimen it would appear that running under two hours would be just a matter of time (pun intended). 

Like practically every elite Kenyan runner, Sawe hails from Nandi County, Kenya’s world-class running highlands. 

If Kashmir produces top-quality rugs and Cremona has the best violin-makers in the world, then Nandi churns out great marathon runners. Indeed, almost the whole Kenya Rift Valley area is famous for producing champions because of the altitude, rolling terrain, and strong running culture. 

Seven days a week Sawe’s routine involves getting up at 6am, run 10-25 kilometres before sunrise, makan, gym, afternoon workout, dinner, lights out at 9pm. Rinse and repeat the next day.

The final six weeks before the London Marathon saw him preparing with a 10-day cycle which involved four days of 25-40 kilometre runs, two days of short interval runs and hill repeats and four days of lighter recovery runs. 

In those weeks, he ran at least 200 kilometres per week, with one week reaching 241 kilometres.

But there’s a humble and simple side to Sawe. His pre-run breakfast was simply two slices of bread with honey and tea. After his win he just had water, rice and a piece of chicken for dinner. None of that champagne stuff.

He used the simplest entry-level watch from Garmin with only basic features. But the tech humility stops there as he wore the ultra-light Adidas Adizero Pro Evo 3, a super-shoe supposedly weighing less than 100 grams. 

Religious about fairness and integrity, Sawe and his team asked to be tested all the time. His sponsor put up US$50,000 (RM197,625) to the Athlete Integrity Unit. The tests are run independently, no advance notice; Sawe went through 25 drug tests in two months.

Because of people like Sawe and Kejelcha, the joke about a PhD being a marathon and not a sprint doesn’t apply anymore. Speed is now irreversibly on the table.

Note 1: In 2019 Eliud Kipchoge broke the two-hour barrier (clocking in at 1:59:40) but that was under optimised conditions (weather, straight road, etc.) with a laser-emitting pace car and multiple world-class pace-makers in front of him to reduce the “air drag” and so on. That project was sponsored by Nike. Sawe, without the optimised set-up, was faster by 10 seconds and wore Adidas.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 26 — Right outside my apartment there’s a small van that’s been sitting in the same parking lot since right after Lionel Messi won the World Cup (kid you not). 

Every day I pass it. Every day it collects more leaves, more dirt, more rust, most pamphlets (fancy that). It’s literally become part of the landscape.

And why? Because its previous owner decided the vehicle wasn’t worth repairing or selling or maybe something happened to him or her.

That’s not the only abandoned vehicle of course. The ominous thing is that there’s (obviously) no official record of how many vehicles are left to rot so we can only make guesstimates based on the number of complaints lodged and those numbers are disheartening.

Across the country between 2018 and 2023, north of 60,000 abandoned vehicles across Malaysia were reported. 

Kuala Lumpur itself saw more than 9,600 complaints resulting in about half the number towed. 

Early this year, around 1,159 damaged/abandoned vehicles were recorded in Federal Territory public housing schemes alone.

Long and short, the numbers are high and serious and that’s why the recent Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) drive to ramp up the removal of abandoned and obstructive vehicles can only be applauded and encouraged. 

I’ve heard it said before in the context of primary education that what you permit, you encourage, something surely relevant if you want to put a halt to the number of cars being chucked along the side of the road.

Indeed, this “epidemic” of discarded vehicles brings to mind something from my university days: the broken windows theory.

DBKL’s crackdown targets derelict cars as KL sees thousands of abandoned vehicle complaints. — Unsplash pic

This theory states that visible signs of neglect or defiance or just bad behaviour within an environment can and will promote further anti-social and even criminal behavior. 

The idea is that if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares, leading to more windows being broken, and eventually, more serious crimes.

We can see this theory in operation in any office where people slack off without being reprimanded, contributing to an overall culture of inefficiency, delays, etc. 

You can also argue that Malaysia’s severe problem with traffic accidents caused by lorries has a similar basis i.e. so many lorry operators see other lorries and operators going around with minimum or zero checks, maintenance, driver-vetting, etc such that nobody’s really motivated to fix any problems, until dangerous lorries become run of mill.

Another unpleasant case is that of folks urinating in stairwells. I’m willing to bet a roll of toilet paper that the more the smell of dried pee persists in any quiet area of the building, the less uninhibited the next dude will be relieving himself in said area.

This is also surely why if you walk around Suria KLCC you’ll sometimes see the security guards telling people sitting on the floor to get up. What at first looks a bit harsh may, in fact, be a smart move in ensuring that such shopping malls maintain that aura of class, an aura surely threatened by many folks sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Thus, in addition to DBKL’s tactics of logistics enhancements, increased disposal capacity and stronger inter-agency co-operation, perhaps there’s one more powerful element which needs to be implemented: increased surveillance to pinpoint such irresponsible vehicle owners so they can be punished?

APRIL 25 — One of the biggest complaints you’ll hear from local audiences with regards to mainstream Malaysian movies, especially the Malay language ones, is that there isn’t enough variety in the types of films being made.

It seemed like we’re being served with only a few types of mainstream movies – rempit movies, horror flicks, gangster movies and slapstick comedies.

There is some truth in this blanket statement, but only if we’re talking about the situation from say, five years ago, or maybe even more.

If five years ago was the last time you went to the cinema to watch a local mainstream movie, or even worse, the last time you paid attention to the cinema release slate for Malaysian mainstream movies, then yes, that statement will ring true.

However, the last few years have seen all sorts of local films playing in cinemas here in Malaysia, from sci-fi mind-benders like Imaginur and Reversi to tear-jerkers like Babah and Badak to action hits like Paskal and Coast Guard, and that’s just scratching the surface.

Look further into non-Malay language local films, and you’ll find gems like the Tamil language Macai and Simple Manusan, or Chinese hits like Close Ur Kopitiam and Money Games.

2026 is already looking like it’s going to provide a very healthy amount of variety, as evidenced by these four new mainstream Malay films, opening one after another in local cinemas in the last few weeks, with quite a few more to follow in the next few weeks. Is something brewing here now?

An undated file photograph shows seats in a cineplex hall. — Picture by Ahmad Zamzahuri

Libang Libu

In the interest of full disclosure, yes, this film was directed by my high school friend, Bobby Husaini, who’s making his feature film debut here, after years of directing TV commercials.

Opening this week in Malaysian cinemas, if you’re looking for laughs, laughs, and more laughs, then Libang Libu is the one to watch.

“Libang libu” is a Perak slang that means to be in a state of chaos, confusion or restlessness, and the movie’s narrative truly lives up to its name by bombarding the audience with plenty of narrative stops, starts and hilarious flashbacks to keep us in that state of mind.

In short, if neatly tied up plots are the main reason you go to the movies, then this one isn’t for you, which is not to say that the plot here is incoherent, but it’s just designed to push and pull you back and forth with all the chaos, just to wring a few more laughs out of you.

The real reason to see this is in its loving, sly, and almost casual mockery of all things Malay and kampung related, with a specific focus on Perak.

If you’re familiar with all three things (like I am), then you’ll enjoy this even more. In short, is this the best film of the year? I don’t think so. Could this be one of the funniest films of the year? I think we have a very strong contender already!

Gayong 2

Last year’s Gayong was a decent box-office hit and this sequel is more of the same, with our hero Meor (Beto Kusyairi) now a police officer in 1950s Singapore fighting corruption within the police force.

If the first film was like a Malaysian version of the Ip Man movies, this sequel, with its shorter running time and increased focus on fight scenes, feels like one of those Tony Jaa hits, efficient action potboilers with deficiencies in the storytelling department.

Not terrible but not great either, it’s a passable time at the movies, especially for fans of fight flicks.

Malaikat Malam

On the surface this might look like just another rempit movie, as it’s centered around the life of a bunch of Malay motorcycle and racing enthusiasts, but if you do take the time to watch this one, which is already one of the year’s biggest local box-office hits with RM14 million and still counting, it’s actually more of a tender romance involving a mat rempit and a blind girl.

Debuting director Nazifdin Nasrudin handles the romance part really well, and I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the movie quite a bit, when it’s operating in this mode.

But when the third act arrives and the movie takes on the traditional rempit movie formula, it stumbles really badly, with the kind of gaps in logic (even when just applying it to the logic of the movie’s world) that will make you want to tear your hair out.

A mixed bag, then, but still a refreshing take on the usual local movie formula.

Mikael: Pemburu Dua Alam

We very rarely get fantasy supernatural films like this, so when one arrives in the form of Mikael: Pemburu Dua Alam, the latest film from Zahir Omar (who made his name with the critically acclaimed Fly By Night), naturally one has to sit up and take notice.

Playing like a Malaysian mash-up of Constantine, RIPD and Van Helsing, the film is led by Remy Ishak as Mikael, an elite police officer in a secret unit that’s tasked to keep the divide between this world and the underworld in order.

Expect plenty of fights with ghosts, djinns and the like, and expect a pretty rollicking good time, even with its flaws aplenty.

But if you ask me, the main reason anyone should see this movie is the star-making comic sidekick performance from Norreen Iman as Winston, which will leave you in stitches.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 23 — Umno turns 100 in 2046, and there’s every chance if it heads the federal government then Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar is prime minister.

Of course, if in 1961 someone posited Mahathir Mohamad will be PM 20 years on and repeats the act in his nineties they’d be laughed off to a mental health facility.

Barring deaths, here’s how the leadership clubhouse would look like in 2046. Anwar Ibrahim is 99, Zahid Hamidi 93, Mohamad Hasan 89 and Hadi Awang 99.

The leadership vacuum in the horizon.

Which is why staying in the race is far more critical than having clever things to say in the interim. The last 80 years of national politics instructs this, almost too cruelly. The battle is one of attrition, not talent.

Forty years ago, Donald Trump was synonymous with sordid divorces rather than sorties into Iran. Imagine that! Time always confounds the unprepared.

So, it can be great for 70-year-old Khairy in 2046.

Suitable for the vacant position

A dozen years ago, this column prophesied “…the stars are aligning well for Khairy.”

At that juncture, he was sports minister after being sidelined four years before for being his father-in-law Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s sidekick between 2000 to 2009. After being out in the cold, a political pathway re-emerged to Seri Perdana.

But I forewarned then, he is not the hope middle class Malaysia yearns for. Najib Razak picked him after four years of toeing the line and unflinching loyalty. The period when Terengganu Investment Authority metamorphosed into 1MDB and the Wolf of Wall Street was in production. The Oxford boy radiated obedience throughout. He is well trained not to look where trouble brews.

Today, Khairy picks Umno as the best vehicle for his personal ambitions, not because he wants Malaysia to be ambitious. Malaysians tend to misunderstand his personal urgency.

Am I being unfair? Let’s enquire.

Khairy Jamaluddin (left) shares a moment with former Pasir Salak MP Datuk Seri Tajuddin Abdul Rahman on April 17, 2026. — Picture from Facebook/Dato Sri Tajuddin Rahman

Where is his vision for Malaysia? Three years in the wilderness, he played it cool in his podcasts, and jumped about in a radio studio. However, he did not stand unequivocally for anything. Committing to a position would require defending a position. A halfway, non-committal sort of yes and no, is much easier to squirm away from.

The years away have been a prolonged job interview. To appear strong but not actually too strong as to alienate people he’d need later.

The political celebrities lined up to be on his show because no one was excoriated when invited on. It was in mutual interest. You look good, I look good, but nothing of substance occurs.

As for the viewers?

Malaysians are trained to look on as the blueblood sits on stage and speaks down to them while being cordial to each other.

Neither Khairy nor partner Shahril Hamdan echo David Frost or mimic even a weak version of Hardtalk. No one is embarrassed.

Compare Khairy with Mahathir in his years out of power after being sacked by Umno’s second president Abdul Rahman Abdul Hamid.

His Malay Dilemma explained the Malaysia he saw and the Malaysia he was determined to engineer. While many disagree with Mahathir, not the least this column, there is no confusion about where Mahathir stands on ethnic superiority and the Malay-first agenda.

You know why you hate Mahathir, or love him as the misguided tend to be.

With Khairy, you are certain he is for all the great things which are possible, unless if they are not great things, then he is not so much for them. The details, he prefers to skip.

He will give the ideas more polish, and avoid the faux pas avalanche Rafizi Ramli hits with alacrity. One is a diplobrat, the other merely a brat.

Two general elections, maybe more

Now that Umno took back the boy wonder, it needs to offer him a spot. A worthy spot.

But men like party deputy president Mohamad Hasan who inherited Khairy’s Rembau parliamentary seat in 2022, rather he jogs and not sprints to the next general election.

I said before GE15 that Khairy in the Dewan Rakyat is an unnecessary threat to Tok Mat. Still true today.

Maybe a bit of jeopardy by shipping him out to Kedah — maternal links — instead of letting Khairy have a crack at Jelebu, Jempol or Kuala Pilah — all traditional Umno seats in Negeri Sembilan. Tok Mat runs the table in Negeri Sembilan for Barisan Nasional.

Khairy has repeated a bit too enthusiastically that he is here to serve the party and not to pursue party positions. They may restrict him to serving in the short-term.

In the “keep him on a short leash” scenario, the party welcomes his campaigning for GE16 without being a candidate and rewards him with a minister position via the senator route. Just like Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz before he fled to PKR. This way, president Zahid Hamidi and Tok Mat are in control.

Zahid did not craft Rumah Bangsa and disguise it as a race love initiative instead of the party recruitment tool it actually is, only to have the recruits usurp him.

The party president may not be worldly, but he is a great warlord in the organisation.

Either way, it’s forward

The conveyor belt is now firmly in motion. Khairy’s ascension in the party is inevitable but the timeline is up for debate.

Even if he fails to become numero uno, he’d be a central figure in the party. The other question, increasingly pertinent, is how central will Umno be to Malaysian politics in the long term?

It has steadily lost pace in the last four elections; is an uptick on the cards because of Khairy?

At least, Khairy has more room to manoeuvre from inside rather than looking in from outside.

He can reap Umno’s success by staying loyal. Already it nauseates hearing him express his gratitude to Zahid whom he fought against for the presidency in 2018.

The old acrimony has dissipated. He is mum about Zahid’s get out of jail play with the 47 charges and the Bar Council’s efforts to U-turn the DNAA at the appeals court.

The only thing he cannot stop yapping about is his ardent love for Umno. A party which has a pedantic fervour to claim “the others” are threatening Malays while looking directly at a large section of middle-class Malaysia which roots for him. The party of principle and justice, just not for all Malaysians.

All of this is academic. The only objective of this column this week is to remind you, very little has ever changed, whether with Khairy, Umno or their common agenda. Twelve years later, it is clearer the road to glory for one man.

The consummate diplomat. They are excellent emissaries but forget not representatives are vague to do their master’s bidding.

Khairy did the tai-chi for three years, to look serious and fun, verbose and sporty, to look the part. But always in audition mode.

While it gets you the gig, leadership sets the agenda. Hanging on for the Umno lifeboat, which has arrived, shows he never was willing to “take it on” by himself. It might ultimately not be what he’s built for.

That’s what you get with this package.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 22 — It’s been nearly a year since my lumpectomy and the stiffness that came on immediately after, still lingers.

My physiotherapist says my shoulder blade isn’t working like it should and despite stretches, exercises and supplements I cannot easily raise my left arm.

I thought that perhaps after my immunotherapy sessions stopped, the stiffness would ease some but apparently sudden onset menopause will do this to you.

As I figured I had nothing left to lose (besides money) I might as well try acupuncture.

There is a practitioner right around the corner, next to my regular GP but I decided to look online for more options and settled for a practice that had an all-female staff.

The whole endeavour would be awkward enough; being around women would be a comfort, especially ones who specialised in women’s health issues.

My acupuncturist/TCM doctor was very nice, super chirpy and rather young but seemed self-assured and wasn’t overly pushy.

I wasn’t sure what to expect besides being poked with needles.

The ensuing session was enlightening.

Thirty minutes, a handful of needles, and a small step toward moving freely again. — AFP pic

So, because my issue was with my left shoulder I would apparently not just be getting more needles but those needles would be attached to a current.

On top of said current, I also had a red heat lamp pointed on top of my shoulder area.

Speaking of needles, I had quite a few of them placed on top of my head, along both hands as well as my feet.

All the needles were inserted while I was lying down on my back in a sarong, and once the needles were placed, a call button was placed under my hand and an alarm set.

There wasn’t anything I could do besides lie down and wait for the 30 minutes to be done; it would have been nice to nap but getting zapped by electrically-charged needles made that a little difficult.

Could have been worse, really.

Someone I know had to see an acupuncturist first thing in the morning, had needles inserted into her head and then was told to just go about her day — with needles, I repeat, in her head.

I didn’t really feel much pain besides the sensation of pricking when the needles entered my body but they did feel uncomfortable when I tried moving my free hand around.

If you’re the kind who cannot sit still I don’t think acupuncture would be wise.

A week has passed since my treatment and the biggest difference is that lifting my arms is less of a hassle.

Yet I find I can somewhat simulate the sensation with my trusty TENS machine, that I forgot about, after no longer needing it once my chemo-induced neuropathy faded.

It’s easier to do my stretches now, my left shoulder blade seems to be more active and relearning to do the things it should have been doing.

In other news, I thought my neuropathy was stopping me from pressing on my aircon remote effectively.

No, the remote was faulty.

I suffered, a whole year, of jabbing the damn button multiple times needlessly but at least the replacement OEM remote was only RM18.

As I don’t really like having to travel for yet another health procedure I think my acupuncture experience will be a one and done, and I will instead continue my physio exercises, un-retire my TENS machine and maybe next month I’ll get my own red light therapy lamp.

I’d like to think the acupuncture treatment helped realign my neural pathways or maybe eased some residual inflammation but who knows, really?

What I do know is the pain has decreased, my mobility has improved and I would say it’s a nice complementary treatment to help manage side effects.

I was told at the centre that one of their clients was a Stage 4 cancer patient who was a regular, having acupuncture to help ease swollen ankles from regular chemotherapy.

That’s where I think alternative treatments should start and end.

It’s important to first see a doctor, get a proper diagnosis and only rely on things like acupuncture, reiki and the like to improve quality of life.

Sadly there are people who turn first to their herbalist, acupuncturist or masseuse for their health issues and only go to the doctor when it’s too late for it to help.

My acupuncturist says my Qi is strong (judging from my pulse) and overall I seem fine though my spleen is a little weak (according to my tongue).

As neither my acupuncturist nor my oncologist feel I need extra medication or therapy, perhaps I am, health-wise, in a better place than I realise.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 19 — The official answer is, of course, yes. The unofficial truth may be more lengthy.

Yes, but…

Since most university students are adults, it’s really up to them. We can’t be checking on every assignment submitted by every student. 

They paid their fees and it’s their education, so ultimately, they have to be responsible for the quality of their own learning. 

No doubt chatbots have made it much easier to submit “fake” assignments but, hey, even without AI detecting cheating isn’t fool proof because a student can simply ask another person to do their work for them.

And if you’ve got hundreds of students, how is it feasible for the lecturer to be checking everyone?

Of course, the option of making every student sit for handwritten exams is there (and this is still being widely done). But online assignments remain part of the course, and they cannot be removed entirely. 

And aren’t institutions supposed to move away from traditional modes of education and assessment?

The author argues that while institutions officially oppose AI-written assignments, practical constraints — from detection limits to cost and scale — make enforcement inconsistent, leaving responsibility largely with students themselves. — Reuters pic

Yes, but…

AI detection software isn’t cheap and their rates are rising. Institution funds are already tight, so sometimes we encourage lecturers and/or students to do their own AI checking and maybe submit a declaration of originality.

Furthermore, many foreign students (or students struggling with English proficiency) use AI platforms for translation purposes all of which “show up” as high AI use. 

Needless to say, it’s very hard to distinguish “co-pilot writing the student’s assignment” (bad) and “Gemini translating the student’s assignment” (neutral).

Yes, but…

Even if the AI-detection software flags some “inappropriate” use of AI there’s still the question of whether the student actually used AI to write that particular sentence or whether it’s simply an error on the part of the software. 

There have been many cases where such software claims that a paragraph wasn’t written by a human but in fact it was. Eg, simply run the Gettysburg Address through a few “anti-AI” programs. Chances are some portions of the speech will be flagged.

A huge problem with AI detection is that, unlike plagiarism-detection, it often cannot be “proven” that a student used Deepseek (or whatever) to write her assignment. 

With plagiarism, it’s easy: Anti-plagiarism software can simply list down the websites and paragraphs which look very very similar to what the student wrote.

With a chatbot, however, it’s almost impossible to prove that a student used said software to construct a paragraph.

Almost the only way to verify if a student wrote something is to conduct interviews with said student. 

This works very well especially for post-graduate students. But if the student numbers are very high (say, into the hundreds) it becomes impractical.

So, do educational institutions care about AI-written assignments?

It’s, uh, complicated.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 16 — The obvious issue plaguing our daily lives the past month needs no introduction.

I’d like to address the transportation and existential elements of the situation here in Malaysia.

A myriad times infinite is the actual number of things to examine related to the 15 per cent of global fuel not passing through the Strait of Hormuz currently which domino effects adversely affect the world, not limited to manufacturing across China or the prospect of the Republicans losing both houses in the November US Elections.

Fascinating as they are, tremendously important as they are over in the Middle East, our fixations are firmly domestic. To aid, some questions, which inadvertently forces more long-term reflections for the Malaysian people.

Do I need that drive?

Millions of government and GLC employees are holding conference calls — while they shoo away young children and other distractions from their makeshift workstation — at home.

Home is where the heart is, also where the office is until they tidy up the landmines and store up the rocket launchers around the Arab peninsula.

Private sector workers follow the beat of their management.

While the bulk of conversations revolve around fuel price, the actual worry in the medium term is fuel supply. It won’t matter how much the price is if there is none to sell.

This is where the government seeks to lead behaviour. Millions of litres of petrol are not utilised by millions of government employees daily if they are at home. Should they order out or can they do more of their bit to conserve by cooking their own meals?

Yesterday was day one of work from home (WFH) and the city traffic was about the same.

This is early days, of the effort to reduce fuel consumption. The current fuel supply uncertainty is not in Malaysia’s hands, how to respond to it, is.

Millions, private or public sector employees, make that decision every day, are they choosing restraint when possible?

It is really about perspectives, which is why it is a moral decision for the individual.

Do you drive back to Ipoh or Johor Bahru this weekend to visit the parents? It may not be an extravagance if care-giving is involved.

There are multitudes of examples and contexts, but the question still remains if a conscience still persists.

In this regard, moral leadership is necessary from the government. It may want to do less telling and find ways to get more Malaysians on board through persuasion.

Unfortunately, almost every government ever in this federation gets afflicted by the “Do as I say, not as I do” syndrome.

A man holds a fuel nozzle at a petrol station on March 25, 2026. — Reuters pic

Do I take before the others do?

Kiasu never went away.

Fuel shortage engenders the typical response in the masses: fill up before the others do. “The last one at the pump is a sucker!”

Psychologists have libraries filled with reports, publications and Hollywood-ready scripts on how the worst comes out of people when scarcity sets in.

In a perverse way, some may reckon, if oil is finite and the next supply uncertain, better use more of it now. Better do that coastal drive to Butterworth now, and not cry about it later. FOMO, fear of missing out.

Trust in each other is the building block of a country. Regrettably, three generations of politicians thrived on mistrust and made it the building block to their electoral victories.

Yet trust is necessary to curb panic and hoarding. So too profiteering, prices upped at the first opportunity.

I remember in the aftermath of the Japan tsunami in 2011 and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown which dislodged over 150,000 people. Yet, queues for food and supplies were orderly even if long and time-consuming. Looting was absent. A conscientious collective is unnoticed until tested, and reputations last a lifetime.

How would Malaysians score?

Where’s the bus stop again?

The buses and trains should be fuller if more in view of global predicaments choose public transportation.

Perhaps this will be a spectacular time to see public officials themselves using the system, presenting themselves as berjiwa rakyat.

There’s not much to add since the arguments are self-evident, the real resistance wall is indifference.

The trains and buses already run, jumping onto them does not add to the petrol consumption count, if anything it reduces cost per rider, and therefore the efficiency of public transportation.

Whose job to deliver steady supply of cheap petrol?

It’s less about politics and more about self-entitlement. We arrive from the back of a petrol-state past, with no state effort to correct our misguided notion of deserving constantly replenished cheap petrol.

Government facilitates, and in our present situation, Malaysia does not dictate to the world.

Even if there is a government change there is no evidence that the reactions will be different or that they have a better plan to deal with oil shortages. Some might whisper, looking at the alternatives available, they may worsen things.

Malaysians may need to readjust their expectations of the government, and demand more from themselves.

The sky’s not falling but we can be better

It’s not dire straits presently. There is every chance a solution soon softens the impact on Malaysia to a period of discomfort only.

Yet, every episode allows us as a country to be introspective.

Not touched here is food security vulnerabilities. Again, a myriad times infinite, the number of issues.

What Malaysians should ask — more of themselves even if they can demand from the government — is whether attitudes must shift from the lessons of the current crisis.

Would we all drive less because it is bad to consume so much fuel?

Would we ask a whole bunch of questions to ourselves all of the time to own more of our problems?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 15 — I have watched more anime in the last two years than I have in my entire lifetime; mostly because I now find Western storytelling very dull.

Whenever I see the Booker list I wonder which tale of midlife crisis/adultery/diaspora disenchantment but written to appeal to Caucasian high-brow tastes made it to the list this time.

My favourite recent read has been Taiwan writer Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue; I wasn’t sure if I’d like the fiction pretending to be non-fiction literary gimmick but it was entertaining and as someone who loves food, particularly Taiwanese food, it did not disappoint.

One of my hobbies is collecting foreign language books and books about learning foreign languages.

I feel they mock me sometimes, from the shelves.

One of the books is my Russian copy of The Master and Margarita, a gift from a friend who said she got it for free because the bookseller was amazed a non-Russian had heard of it, and wanted it.

There is still time for me to pick a language, pick a book and attempt to understand it in its original tongue but I am paralysed by the demands on my time and the bounty of choice.

So instead I procrastinate by watching anime.

I’ve just finished watching Kaya-chan Isn’t Scary and it has an interesting, and weirdly personally relatable premise (for me).

Little Kaya, a preschooler, is psychic.

She can see things others can’t, including monsters that mean her and her fellow preschoolers harm.

The teachers and her classmates see her as a “problem child” when all Kaya is trying to do is protect them from the monsters.

Kaya isn’t afraid of the monsters. Being psychic she has more spiritual power than even some spiritually-attuned adults and can ward off even the scariest bogeymen with a single punch.

(Spoiler alert) Then in one episode, Kaya meets a foe she cannot fend off, and one abetted, unwittingly, by adult onlookers who should have protected her.

Kaya meets a monster but he is an ordinary man who can’t resist trying to walk away with her, a child lost and without her guardians.

Despite her protests the other adults laugh and think she is just having a tantrum.

It takes her distant cousin who happens to be walking by to rescue her from her would-be kidnapper, who instead of showing remorse, admonishes him for not looking after Kaya better, before disappearing into the crowd.

Kaya’s cousin, also a psychic, then picks her up and tells her there are some monsters she can’t fight.

I found the scene harrowing because I empathised with it too much.

When, as a child, I was assaulted in a library I had thought even then, why is this happening? Isn’t this place supposed to be safe?

All children deserve to feel safe.

It feels unreal to read about the Epstein files, the recent report about a toddler being assaulted in ICE custody and the recent paedophile ring arrests in Johor, as well as widespread child sexual abuse in a children’s home in Selayang.

The crowd who feels the need to scream that “women can be sexual attackers too” need to quiet down because women being the perpetrators is the exception and not the rule.

Women are told to learn self-defence, to be careful who they go out with, where they jog, who they date, who they marry and when assaulted, always have to deflect the blame put on them for not “making better choices.”

Do children have the choice in deciding not to be fodder for paedophiles?

I was a little depressed post-cancer looking in the mirror, at my flabby abdomen, menopausal acne, sagging jowls but having had to endure strange men even trying to harass me at my front gate, it’s kind of a relief to be free of male attention.

So when I was back in Sabah for a few days (mainly so my mother wouldn’t decide to give me a heart attack by flying here) I felt nothing but irritation when a passing man on a motorbike catcalled.

It is not women who decided to cause the current West Asian conflict, nor are they behind the troubles in Sudan, and the Congo.

It is not women who keep making themselves the scapegoat for low birthrates, with men now outrightly suggesting that perhaps braindead women could be kept on life support to be used as surrogates or in Russia, women who refuse to have children will be referred to psychotherapists to help convince them motherhood isn’t a bad thing.

As though we are less than human, merely attractive breeding stock not allowed self-determination.

There are young women who are preemptively on birth control so if on the off-chance they are raped, they won’t likely get pregnant.

Serial killers? Mostly men.

Suicide bombers? Also men.

There is something fundamentally wrong in society for men to be so much more skewed towards violence and depravity, and we cannot keep making excuses and calling it “human nature.”

Do not look for bogeyman under beds or in closets; the real monsters have always been, in the flesh, men.

Stop blaming women for men being lonely or unmarried because the problem has always been with them.

At least you won’t have to worry about your cat or dog plotting to kill you.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 10 — So I woke up on Wednesday morning and saw some hopeful news on my phone: Both the US and Iran announced a two-week ceasefire as a sort of prelude to formal negotiations on April 10th to end the war.

Great! Yay!

Except about half an hour after I read the ceasefire news I also read that Iran had fired missiles into Israel and her Arab neighbours, Israel had fired back and – omg! – it looks as if all talk of “cease firing” was a very short-lived joke. 

A few of my friends even expressed concern that the continued rockets and hostilities – barely an hour (or less) after an official ceasefire announcement – was proof that this war could end up being a forever war.

Thing is, it’s guaranteed that many people who were at first joyfully anticipating an end to this war (and all the economic problems it’s been causing) must’ve felt their hopes dissipated.

Thankfully, though, if history is anything to go by we can be assured that the ceasefire announcement on Wednesday is a major (albeit fragile) first step towards ending this conflict. 

Because, believe it or not, most official ceasefires do not mean the warring parties actually cease firing.

Consider last year’s Asean Summit where President Trump and Prime Minister Anwar witnessed the signing of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord by both the Thailand and Cambodia prime ministers. 

This very formal and official ceasefire agreement, significantly, did not result in a complete cessation of hostilities (in fact, another ceasefire agreement had to be signed a few months later) but, crucially, it represented the first steps towards ensuring peace.

As of now – fingers crossed – the fighting has more or less abated.

First responders gather at the site of an Israeli airstrike in the village of Habbouch, southern Lebanon on April 10, 2026. A ceasefire in name, conflict in reality – even after agreements are signed, fighting often continues, underscoring how fragile the first steps towards peace can be. — AFP pic

Ceasefires are announced with fanfare: diplomats shake hands, headlines proclaim “Fighting Stops,” and the world breathes a tentative sigh of relief. 

The point is that skirmishes, violations, artillery duels, and opportunistic attacks often continue – often immediately. A ceasefire is rarely a true end to violence; it is usually a tactical pause dressed up as progress.

The fundamental reason most ceasefires fail to deliver lasting quiet is because they represent a suspension of hostilities, not a peace treaty. 

It does not resolve the underlying political, ethnic, or territorial disputes that caused the war. 

Without robust enforcement mechanisms – neutral monitors, demilitarised zones with real teeth, or mutual exhaustion – parties will obviously retain both the means and the incentive to keep testing and hurting each other. 

In fact, for the 2,200 plus ceasefire agreements made from the start of the 20th century up to today, practically all have met with post-agreement hostilities (see Note 1) but – crucially – this does not mean that the ceasefire was pointless. Whilst ceasefires do not mean a cessation of firing, the eventual peace could not have come about without them. 

Seen pessimistically, one could argue that hostile human nature will always find reasons to fight and not stop. But looked at optimistically one could say that without these ceasefire agreements, the wars would either get worse or be well and truly indefinite.

Ceasefires and armistices remain important.  They save lives in the short term, allow aid to reach civilians, create much-needed space for negotiations and buy political breathing room. 

Comprehensive agreements with verification teams and clear red lines tend to perform better than vague declarations. Yet total cessation of all firing remains extraordinarily rare. 

Announcing a ceasefire should never be confused with ending a war, but wars rarely end without one. It brings brittle (and often failed) anticipation for peace. But in times like these, surely even the smallest glimmer of hope helps.

Note 1: It appears only two ceasefires in modern history have resulted in practically zero hostilities in the short term: the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. These were rare exceptions where clear and strong mutual interests translated into genuine and sustained calm and stopped renewed fighting.

APRIL 9 — Destination currently reads, nowhere. He’s fading faster than expected.

It’s as though after being kicked out of Bersatu, Hamzah Zainudin stands in the parking lot, toying with his smartphone while it is on flight mode and pretending to book a ride.

Raised in Umno, to posture is second nature but the Larut strongman is steadily losing momentum by, well, just posturing.

The defiance shown after his sacking by Bersatu by having a gathering the day after with most of the party’s MPs in attendance was a strong start but two months are about to pass and few outside or inside Perikatan Nasional are aware what the leader of the Opposition is up to.  Or where he intends to go.

Everyone is fairly certain who he is against, however hardly anyone is aware what he is for going forward.

PAS have appointed a chairman for PN and by June, do not hold your breath, they’d appoint a new Leader of Opposition from their ranks.

When that happens, unless other developments precede it, he’d be without a party, a coalition or a meaningful position.

It’ll just be Larut in Dewan Rakyat, seated next to Muar and Bukit Gantang in the Siberia of the lower chamber. Political indecision is a career-killer even in risk averse Malaysia.

It probably makes a lot of people at Umno’s headquarters chuckle. How about them apples?

The author argues that Hamzah Zainudin’s post-Bersatu trajectory is marked by indecision and lack of direction, with his failure to articulate a clear political path risking his relevance as support within Perikatan Nasional wanes and rivals move to fill the vacuum. — Picture by Sayuti Zainudin

The Attrition Method

He had a charmed life in politics till about eight weeks ago.

Hamzah jumped ship from Umno in 2018 to a Bersatu chaired by Mahathir Mohamad. By the time president Muhyiddin Yassin’s crew ousted Mahathir from the party and as prime minister, Hamzah was already a senior figure in the nascent party. 

Appointed home minister in the pandemic Cabinet. When PN failed to deliver in GE2022, it was still an up for Hamzah as he was catapulted to become the coalition’s face in parliament as leader.

Last year in June, Hamzah worked with the leadership to prop himself up as deputy president, thanks to pliant Ahmad Faizal Azumu or Peja relegating himself from deputy to vice-president, to enable the manoeuvre.  And being declared at the party’s October polls as the unopposed number two was just a step away to the top post.

Thereafter, lead the party and coalition to GE16 and the highest office in the land.

That quickly? Can be if it is a charm offensive in tandem with an internal ouster of Muhyiddin. Dance with the committee while assassins wait in the dark with silencers.

Gathered statutory declarations (SDs) from 120 division chiefs asking for a polite leadership succession. To Hamzah it was stratagem, to Muhyiddin it was a hostile takeover.

A series of sackings and suspensions followed, culminating with Hamzah’s own axing.

Future researchers cannot claim it a misunderstanding, as there were elaborate and painstaking efforts to undermine the president with the active role of the Perak Man. A hundred-twenty division chiefs do not randomly submit SDs.

Traded blows, in the sick-bay

Hamzah knew a standoff was building from the year-end Perlis putsch which precipitated Muhyiddin and allies’ resignations from PN posts. Yet it seemed the only thing he was ready for was for Muhyiddin to hand over the reins rather than fight.

Both were bloodied by Hamzah’s sacking. The ex-deputy had 18 MPs but no  platform. They’ll wait but not forever. Politicians must consider options. Former Srikandi chief and Melaka chieftain Mas Ermieyati Samsudin has a state election in December, which determines her own political future. She backs Hamzah, for now.

Muhyiddin has perhaps six MPs including himself. While he can enjoy Hamzah’s struggle, he’d rue his party’s diminished stature. Even more so when there’s a global economic situation to rival the 2008 meltdown. Sitting governments are often punished and the benefactors will be the Opposition parties.

The Bersatu implosion forces PN to stutter as PAS is ill-equipped to step up due to its own deformities.

Surf conditions are perfect, and they cannot find a single surfboard among them to ride the wave to glory.

Panderers are Yellow Pandas

Knowing how Hamzah got to this predicament and PN’s preoccupations with being preoccupied explains the malaise. Yet, seeing Hamzah’s no-agenda method explains his own ineptitude.

The initial conversation was refashioning the inactive Parti Keluarga Malaysia, which unfortunately shares the abbreviation of the defunct Parti Komunis Malaya (Malayan Communist Party).  It seems Hamzah is less comfortable to speak about the PKM ties.

Days ago, he intimated he may opt for PAS membership.

He cannot just pack and leave one major party for another and expect seamless integration. The entry of ex-PKR leaders into Bersatu lent to the power struggles between him and Muhyiddin.

PAS is a 75-year-old party which has navigated itself firmly as a cleric led movement the last 40 years. How does a soon to be 70 quantity surveyor turned Umno-style corporate bigwig position himself in PAS? And does he also drag along his 18 MPs?

Being open to options in the first week was prudent. Not narrowing choices after two months starts to give a scent of uncertainty. Which then makes supporters nervous. Umno is aggressively seeking to recoup ex-leaders who bolted, that’s the majority of MPs with Hamzah.

If the new leader does not deploy a pathway to power for the followers, and the old grand party opens its doors, doubt seeps in.

Mas Ermieyati is the Public Accounts Committee chair and grassroots leaders in Melaka, Umno only get stronger with her back as Masjid Tanah MP. Ronald Kiandee is a six-time incumbent at Beluran and can up Umno’s appeal in Sabah and give a valuable seat  to tip the count on election night.

Umno rubs its hands with glee in anticipation in case Hamzah is a zero, they can become the hero and embrace old guards back into the fold.

While Hamzah has succeeded in the past, it has been on the shoulders of giants in Umno and Bersatu. Now, when the opportunity presents itself to him to kick off his own vehicle he displays more hesitation than enthusiasm. 

It’s fun being angry and rewarded for wild fury all the while, but leading at the top means having a vision.

Perhaps this was always beyond his pay grade.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

APRIL 7 — As I write this I’m having a little pity party.

It’s been 11 days since I caught an upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) and I have yet to shake it off.

My brain has decided to go on an extended holiday and I am writing this by the power of whichever brain cell did not fit into the suitcase.

So I looked up why I’ve been so ill for so long and apparently thanks to the combo of post-cancer and being on tamoxifen, my immune system is as effective as the new Kelantan airport terminal at keeping motorbike racers out.

It might be years before my immune system gets stronger, and I also found out that another common experience post-cancer is URTIs taking a lot longer to clear.

Well, I guess I am never visiting any country in winter.

It also means that I need to be strict about masking again because it’s been a miserable week with my bedside table looking like a tissue sculpture installation of Mount Fuji.

Will I be well enough to endure the trip to Penang in a few days? We’ll see. At least I’m going by train, I’m not coughing (just leaking enough fluid to float a dinghy) and I still have Vinda tissue.

My housemate and I (this is not an advertisement) use Vinda because cheaper tissues tend to disintegrate when wet and Vinda wet wipes also make excellent mop pad replacements.

You know how wet wipes often dry out because the seal often gets weak? I realised I forgot to close a Vinda wet wipe packet and lo, it was still moist and usable.

In a perfect world, I would use reusable towels but in my heavily immunocompromised world, disposables are the only thing between me and a mountain of pathogens.

My hips, knees and arms still ache. I still approach stairs with caution.

I have recovered enough of my taste buds that my spice tolerance has reduced; I thought I was getting better at eating hot food but no, my cancer treatment had just destroyed the surface of my tongue.

Some days I feel a little more flexible, and it feels less painful to get out of a chair or a car.

Other days all I feel is tiredness and a stiffness that threatens never to leave.

Healing isn’t a linear route; some days you’re the trainer, some days you’re the one in the Pokémon Center. — AFP pic

I wish I could give a far rosier picture of my post-cancer life but healing, I’m finding out, is something that will happen on its own schedule and not mine.

When I get to Penang I’ll probably avoid queuing (I had enough of all the lining up in Taipei, as delicious as the end results proved).

Maybe I’ll laze by the pool.

Or I’ll learn to play Pokémon Champions, the new game that I can show to the taxman to prove that I really am competing in e-sports, because it’s probably the only sport I can play without keeling over.

Competing in Pokémon e-sports is like chess...except you choose which pieces you will bring to the board from a whopping 1,028, with hundreds of possible movesets, conditions and strategies.

It’s very hard but maybe pitting virtual monsters at each other might be the kickstart my brain needs because lately I’ve been struggling to remember names and places — seeing them in my mind but the names fail me.

Life is dull and tiring now, especially with the conflict in West Asia as a backdrop, but I will remember again that saying I came across long ago, that the life you’re living might be someone else’s dream.

The least I can do is make mine a good one.